38 S&W Industrial Blanks?

General Ammunition Discussion
#1

I picked up some 38 S&W blanks at an estate sale. They all have the same headstamp - REM-UMC 38 S&W. Of the 35 blanks, 24 have plain cardboard patches, and the other 9 have silver patches. All are brass roll-crimped cases, and all have copper primers. I was wondering if the different wad colors mean anything. The different colors make me think of various industrial blanks that are color coded by power level. I’ve attached two pictures below. Thank you for any help.

Picture of the wads.

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Picture of the headstamps.

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#2

Plain buff wads, red wads and blue wads all exist in blanks in auto pistol calibers like .32 auto as well. I am not aware of any tools that use blanks in that particular caliber, but then I readily admit I know next to nothing about tool blanks other than a few in .38 Automatic and one or two in .45 Automatic.

Tool cartridges are an interesting field, and one that has been discussed on this Forum before. Additional discussion is always welcome. I do not recall any discussion of those in .38 S&W caliber specifically.

#3

Probably starter pistol blanks, training blanks etc. Here is an example of a catalog listing for these types of blanks, from the IAA Home page, Reference section, Ammunition Catalogs, Remington - UMC 1923 Catalog (PDF download file), page 137; click on the following link and it will take you to the pdf file: cartridgecollectors.org/content/ … atalog.pdf .

#4

It was a very common calibre here years ago as starting pistol blanks because they fitted the ex military British revolvers. I’m told the biggest use for pistol blanks was training military and police horses.

#5

Thank you for the information on these. I appreciate it. I will read through the Remington catalog. Thanks for the link.